This week we broke out of slow pace beach live in Goa in to the sightseeing frenzy! In one week we went to world heritage sights: Red Fort, Humayun’s Tomb, Qutub Minar in Delhi, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri around Agra and observatory Jantar Mantar in Jaipur and of course to one of the world 7 wonders: Taj Mahal. We have seen other incredible architecture of mosques and palaces. Just look at our photos It is incredible!! But what is even more incredible is how difficult it is for an independent traveller to negotiate your way to all these beautiful sights! So this blog is (unfortunately) mostly about my experiences and observations that made India for me even more incredible than its splendid monuments. I cried twice in Delhi!
Following the basic role of travel to always know your way out of the place, on our first morning in Delhi we went to the train station to buy tickets for our onward journey. Like in Mumbai, Delhi station has a separate booking office for foreign travellers on the 1st floor of the main station building. From Lonely Planet we already knew about the touts and scam at the station that would do anything not to let you get to this booking office and instead divert you to their illegitimate travel agency that could (maybe?) arrange for the tickets for exorbitant commission and sell you some other expensive service that you really do not need. Yet, for some reason we fell for it! Maybe we were too relaxed after Goa? Or maybe it was just impossible not fall for the sneaky and well trained scammer? Basically a guy with an authoritative voice and fake government ID managed to redirect us to his scam travel agency that surprise, surprise was located on the 1st floor and had exactly the same name as the official railway booking office ‘International Tourist Bureau’. It would be too long to describe all the lies that came out of this guy’s mouth but he officialise himself by pointing to the ‘Incredible !ndia’ poster on his wall… The biggest lie however was that there well no seats available for any train from Delhi to our next stop Agra and that he instead would offer us a ‘official government’ railway minibus service for 11,000 Rs while the first class train ticket costs 700 rs. We infuriated him but get out of his agency and after a coffee and in the Indian Starbucks equivalent ‘Café Coffee Day’ we attempted again to get through to the real Tourist Bureau… and failed again. This time on the friendly information from a Sikh guy that even used our lonely planet map to direct us to the government information centre ‘Incredible !ndia’ so that his mate could catch us on the way and on the pretence of helping us to find our way drag us to another liar’s cave! According to his lies ‘Incredible !ndia’ information centre was the only place that was booking advance train tickets while the International Tourist Bureau was only booking same day tickets. Then his friendly mate in meticulously tied turban met us on the pedestrian crossing and casually chatted to us while dragging us away from our destination that apparently has moved due to the metro construction. Yet again we persevered the scam and got to the ‘Incredible !ndia’ information office (meeting other scammers on the way) just to find out that they do not book any train tickets at all and we had to go back to the train station. By then it was about 3 hours after our initial attempt to enter the International Tourist Bureau in the railway station… and I cried to the pour lady there! Because I could not believe how much time we wasted on the hot day but more so how easy it was for these guys to lie and how easy it was to fall for the lies and also because this was the end of the travel as I know it! From that day a friendly hello that I would normally reciprocate is just a warning sign of somebody trying to take advantage of you! Unfortunately this experience sort of defined my attitude for the rest of the week... Other than in the hideouts of the magnificent sights, I was tense fearing another liar’s encounter and did not want to talk to anybody. This is an incredibly wrong way to travel…From this point we had no choice but to persevere the scam and after another attempt (this time through an entrance from the metro station) we managed to get to the official booking office and of course got our tickets after only about 30 minutes wait! Hurrah!
The next day in Delhi we went to Ghandi Memorial (Ghandi Smriti) where he was shot dead in 1948. It displays his room where he spent last 144 days of his life and his small worldly possessions including the famous glasses. It also has an interesting multimedia exhibition about his life and most importantly his philosophy. I never really fully appreciated the depth and wisdom of his preaching but here I learned that the cornerstone of his philosophy is the Truth! How incredible… It was very indeed a very emotional place that made shed a few tears! It is incredible that a nation that calls Ghandi their father (but a bit ironically puts his face on all its banknotes) could also produce such a scam and liars that we met on the train station! Or maybe it is just a sheer numbers’ game?
‘Do you want to use my helicopter?’ 
Taxi and autorickshaws is a story on its own. The moment you step out on the street there is at least one or a few of them offering their service. The funny catch line often used is ‘Do you want to use my helicopter?’ That’s fine, they are just trying to get your business… What is incredible is how hard it is to convince them that you do NOT need it for the moment. In the country where English is one of the official languages simple NO seems to be the hardest word to understand. And again the amount of lies on offer is incredible… They have all these stories on how far, or how dangerous it is to walk, almost like nobody in India is walking at all. But what is even worse is that once you agree to use ‘the helicopter’ you still have to negotiate to be driven just from point A to B. They want to take you places; anywhere but where you want to go: to shops, directly to the hotel instead to the metro or bus stop or to the different shop or sight that is definitely 100 times better or cheaper than the one you want to go! Not sure what it is… is it trying to take advantage of the tourist or they really think that the tourists are stupid and have no idea on what they are doing but definitely it makes it incredibly exhausting for the independent traveller. Slowly however I am getting used to it. Maybe back home I will be surprised that the taxi drivers have nothing to offer, just the driving… Rudeness or simply a cultural difference
I remember the first time I heard ‘I am sorry’. We were walking in Delhi’s crowded Main Bazar and a lady passing by touched my arm and said 'I am sorry'. Also one time in one of Jaipur’s bazars somebody said ‘Excuse me’ to pass… Incredible, but it only happened handful of times in the whole week. Normally people just push you or stumble at you, jump ahead of you in the queue, whether to buy a ticket or to a good photo spot. And it is everybody, elderly and kids... They get into the train, bus or metro before they let people out, completely no problem in obstructing your way out. Incredible, but in Delhi on major metro stations they have an official at literally every door directing human traffic just to enable people to get off the train! Incredible... Maybe it is simply the way to do things in such a populated country? Sometimes people are very friendly and polite but this is mostly when they want to buy something like in our hotel in Delhi where we were getting smiles until we refused to purchase the 10 days private tour of Rajastan… As with a couple of 'i am sorry' or excuse me' there are some exceptions. You just have to cherish those moment of the genuine politeness.
I have more ‘incredible’ observations from India but I will finish what seems to be like ‘ranting’ for now… before I discourage anybody from ever coming to India cause I am very happy to have seen and impressed with the incredible monuments but I would think twice before coming here as independent traveller. It might be much easier to see Incredible!ndia in the packaged tour and simply be taken in the comfortable bus and focus on the beauty of the architecture? 
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